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I see and hear these conversations in Aotearoa,429 Mosir,430 Hbun Squmi,431 Chukiyawu,432 Yondotin,433 iTswani,434 and in thousands of other places whose real names are not now remembered. I see and hear people having these conversations in great communal gatherings in maraes and longhouses, and I see them having these conversations singly, with friends, brothers, grandmothers. I see men (and women) sharpening their arrowheads and honing the edges of their tomahawks. I see them preparing for war, and I see the determination in their eyes and in the set of their jaw. I see also sorrow, for what’s been lost, and joy and exuberance, excitement and clarity at the prospect of finally fighting back. They are of all races, from all places, getting ready to fight to defend their lives and the land they love. I see others wrapping their weapons in skins, putting them away, vowing to bring them out again only to hunt, but to fight the civilized no more forever.

I can hear those who argue against fighting back. I hear the Choctaw Pushmataha, for example. The night is warm. Fall has not yet fully arrived in this land. The fire is low. It is late. Pushmataha says, “The question before us now is not what wrongs they have inflicted upon our race, but what measures are best for us to adopt in regard to them; and though our race may have been unjustly treated and shamefully wronged by them, yet I shall not for that reason alone advise you to destroy them, unless it was just and expedient for you so to do; nor, would I advise you to forgive them, though worthy of your commiseration, unless I believe it would be to the interest of our common good. We should consult more in regard to our future welfare than our present. What people, my friends and countrymen, were so wise and inconsiderate as to engage in a war of their own accord, when their own strength, and even with the strength of others, was judged unequal to the task?”435 We should not fight, he says, because we cannot win.436

Now I hear another also argue against fighting back. It is the Santee Sioux Taóyatedúta. His people are starving to death because his tribe has been forced onto a reservation—forced into dependency—and the food they were promised in exchange for giving up their land has (of course) not arrived. Most of the Santee are ready to go to war. Taóyatedúta warns against this, for reasons as pragmatic as Pushmataha’s, though in language more direct: “See!—the white men are like the locusts when they fly so thick that the whole sky is a snow-storm. You may kill one—two—ten; yes, as many as the leaves in the forest yonder, and their brothers will not miss them. Kill one—two—ten, and ten times ten will come to kill you. Count your fingers all day long and white men with guns in their hands will come faster than you can count. . . . Yes; they fight among themselves, but if you strike at them they will all turn on you and devour you and your women and little children just as the locusts in their time fall on the trees and devour all the leaves in one day. . . . You will die like the rabbits when the hungry wolves hunt them in the Hard Moon [January].” After saying all of this, Taóyatedúta looks at the faces of those around him. He again begins to speak. He thinks those who clamor for war are fools, but if his people are foolish enough to go to war against these overwhelming odds, he says, “Taóyatedúta is not a coward: he will die with you.”437

I see and hear others who do not counsel caution or cooperation with those who are killing them, but who wish to strike back, and strike back hard. Standing at the same low fire as Pushmataha, the great Shawnee Tecumseh states, “If there is one here tonight who believes that his rights will not sooner or later be taken from him by the avaricious American pale-faces, his ignorance ought to excite pity, for he knows little of the character of our common foe. And if there be one among you mad enough to undervalue the growing power of the white race among us, let him tremble in considering